


Drowning in Azure Wells

by maharieel



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, most of this is spent in the water, sensation of drowning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-04
Updated: 2017-01-04
Packaged: 2018-09-14 17:56:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9197132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maharieel/pseuds/maharieel
Summary: Hawke falls, and Fenris falls right on after her as usual.





	

**Author's Note:**

> If you're uncomfortable with drowning mentions or the idea of people being stuck in the water, take caution.

The Wounded Coast was a horrid place in winter, Fenris had decided.

Frigid winds swept up from the water to make his teeth chatter, branches littered the paths from the numerous storms that often ravaged the area, and there always seemed to be a larger abundance of bandits and slavers and general miscreants who lacked the brains to realise hiding on the Coast was as much of a death sentence in winter as being a mage in the Gallows was as of late. As much as he despised the Imperium and everything it entailed, at least it had been warm and the ground hadn’t been covered by a thick layer of snow every second day.

And yet every time Hawke had turned up in the foyer of his mansion, hair in a loose braid that trailed down her back and clothed in the beautiful fur-lined hunting coat she’d bought a few winters past, Fenris could not, for the life of him, refuse her. At first he’d questioned why he was so easily persuaded by this blonde southerner with the odd surname; he wasn’t usually one to be convinced easily, especially not by a mage of all people, and yet a few carefully toned words from her and he may as well have been putty in her palms. When had he become so urgent to please her?

It was all rather simple, really, once he’d figured it out some years later – Fenris loved Hawke, always had, always would, despite her barely-tolerable humour, incredible vanity, general affection for her magic and the fact that she dragged him to hunt bandits on the Wounded Coast in the dead of winter. Yes, he loved her despite it all and it may well have been the end of him as he knew it.

“ – difficult. Keep yabbering on about things moving around by themselves and whatnot.”

“You sound surprised.”

“Oh shut it. Are you going to help an old friend out or not?”

“Hush hush. Who do you think I am?”

“At this point, the fool who dragged me out here in the freezing cold with barely any notice. People do have lives besides you Hawke, in case you weren’t aware.”

The corners of Hawke’s lips slowly turned up into smirk and not long after, a huff of foggy laughter escaped from between her lips. “My, since when?” Her attention turned over her shoulder at Fenris then, an incredulous look on her face. “Were you aware of this?”

He did his best to hide his own smirk. “Not at all.”

Clearly exasperated at his comrades, Varric threw his hands up and stalked ahead of the small troupe with a huff and grunt. Hawke simply laughed after him quietly, hand resting on her hip as she waited for Fenris to fall into step beside her. He threw a quick look over his shoulder to spy Aveline bringing up the rear, shaking her head.

“You’re free Thursday evening, I suppose?” she asked after a moment of quiet traipsing.

Had the question come from anyone else he surely would have glared or snarled or simply stormed off, content to shield his precious private time from others. Not that he had many commitments of late; he simply didn’t like being ordered. And yet . . . “I’m at your beck-and-call, Hawke.”

That warranted another smirk. “Good to know. Turns out the shit-storm from the Deep Roads continues to haunt us to this day.”

“I’m not sure I want to know.”

She shook her head, adjusting the collar of her coat. “Probably not. But just a warning, the place is most-likely haunted.”

“Splendid.”

She almost laughed again at that, but her gaze just lingered on him for a moment longer than necessary before sliding back to the path ahead. He did the same, not in the mood to be caught openly staring.

They spent another few hours stalking the Coast, eyes peeled for the bandits Aveline had come to Hawke about the day before. They weren’t causing too much trouble, but the guard was so tangled up with the Templars and business within the city that there was no room to send extra patrols to the Coast to eliminate them. Hawke had volunteered her aid, of course. Fenris wasn’t sure if she had accepted the task out of the kindness of her heart, or if she simply desired to be rid of the walls of Kirkwall for a few hours in the very least. With Meredith and Orsino breathing down her neck he couldn’t blame her.

It wasn’t long before they stumbled upon the remains of a camp, coals still glowing a faint orange in the afternoon light and a few logs tugged around it as makeshift seating. Without hesitation Hawke crouched beside the fire, hands reaching out into the centre of the pit. Once, his instinct would have been to tug her away from the flames lest she burn herself, but after years by her side Fenris simply remained at her back as she poured through the fire, hands never even turning a slight red from the flames. When she straightened, she had a burning coal in her palm.

“They weren’t here long ago,” she said, fingers scraping at the charred rock. “And we shouldn’t have to worry about a mage.”

Varric came up to her then, Bianca off his back and resting effortlessly against his shoulder. “You sure?”

“Positive. This was lit manually.” As she said it, she discarded the coal back in the pit, sending a small plume of embers scattering. The wind that was slightly tousling Hawke’s hair extinguished them before they could catch on the twigs laying nearby. “Only a fool would forgo using such easy magic, particularly so far from the eyes of the Templars.”

“Maybe we’re dealing with fools,” Aveline said, eyes fixated on the path ahead as they had been for hours. “At any rate, we’re close. Stay alert.”

Hawke made off back down the path at that, a briskness to her step that hadn’t been there before, and Fenris followed on her heel. His hands itched for his sword at his back and in the corner of his eye he spied light tendrils of magic weaving between Hawke’s lose fist, but neither of them brandished their respective weapons openly just yet.

It was an agonisingly long time before any sign of the bandits emerged. The wind had worsened considerably (as had the temperature) as they made their way along the cliff edge. Fenris’s mind screamed at him that this was a perfect place for an ambush, the four of them lined up nicely along the edge of a precarious drop-off; some well-placed arrows could easily topple them into the frozen waters below. He could almost feel Aveline tense behind him as she was hit with the same realisation.

“Quickly,” Hawke muttered from the front.

Seconds later they passed the thinnest part of the path, only to stumble into a rather populated camp of heavily armed bandits and raiders.

Fenris’s sword was in hand in seconds. “I thought this was a small group,” he said through gritted teeth, eyes scanning the crowd (seeing no staves) until they landed on the largest man.

“Supposedly it was,” Aveling muttered.

There were no pleasantries, no cryptic speeches or demands for surrender. The largest man, of which Fenris had not moved his gaze from, took a few seconds to examine their troupe before his eyes landed on Hawke. Her blonde hair was flapping in the wind and at some point her staff had found its way into her hands. She smirked slightly at the leader, a crackle of fire dripping from her fingertips, and all hell broke loose.

In a haze of blue light his lyrium roared to life and Fenris was in front of the leader before the man could even blink. Fenris swung his sword wide, slicing through numerous unprepared bandits before his sword cut into the man’s hip. Blood sprayed across his front and he didn’t stop swinging.

Aveline was not far away, cutting away easily at those that surrounded her and occasionally crushing runaways with her shield. Despite the chaos of the battle he could still hear the thud of arrows meeting their targets off in the distance, and crucially, he could still feel the familiar tingle of Hawke’s magic in the air.

He spun, shielding his face against the spray of blood that erupted from a man’s throat, and glanced at Hawke across the field. Her staff was barely visible she spun it so fast, fire and ice and entropic curses spilling from its tip and crippling man after man. As Fenris ducked under a wide swing of a sword he spied one bandit rush at her. Her magic was cut off for barely a few seconds as she battered him to his knees with her staff and the occasional well-placed kick. At the last moment, she shoved her hand against his bloodied arm and he shattered in place at her feet, sword clattering to the ground.

Fenris turned his attention back to the battle, unconcerned.

In the end the bandits were as Aveline had reported – foolish, inexperienced and easily eliminated. Countless bodies lay scattered at his feet and yet he had barely a scratch on him, although his sword and arms were slick with crimson. One of the final bandits made to flee at the site of the bloodstained elf snarling before him, and made it a mere metre before Fenris shoved his hand through his chest to cup his hand around the man’s frantically-beating heart.

He was in the process of ripping it out when something snapped through the air.

Momentarily distracted by the sudden emptiness around him, Fenris almost lost his grip on his prey. Quickly enough he tore the man’s chest asunder and spun to where Varric was rushing to the side of the cliff, careless to the few archers remaining. Aveline too had rushed towards the edge, shield held aloft to cover her retreat backwards (not that the remaining bandits seemed to care, having already taken the opportunity to flee). Fenris only then realised the emptiness had been the magic hastily cut off from –

 _Hawke_.

The brisk air suddenly rushed back to Fenris as he dragged his eyes over the small clearing, heart ready to tear from his chest, and across the small space between him and the cliff’s edge Aveline met his gaze. In a few large strides, he was in front of the guard-captain so close their chests almost touched.

“There was a mage hidden amongst them. I saw him too late.” He saw Aveline swallow. “She went over.”

“Fuck, Hawke,” Varric said from where he crouched by the edge trying to see through the spray of the waves below.

Ignoring the fact that his breathing was running mad and that he was trembling bad enough to let his sword slip to the ground, Fenris backed up before sprinting for the edge, muscles tensed and ready to propel him downwards.

“Fenris!” Aveline and Varric screamed in unison but he was already soaring, already plunging, already getting lashed in the face by freezing sea spray, already trying to spy her blonde locks amongst the darkness. The harsh blue of the sea rushed up to him so quickly he barely had time to brace himself as his body crashed through the water in a flurry of foam and ice.

He couldn’t breathe. Not for the few seconds he was held under by the thrashing waves above him, not as his mind reeled at the fact that Hawke was likely caged in such a position, but his mind quickly adjusted and pushed him to the surface before he could be tossed against the rocks like a doll. With a gasp, he broke through the waves, arms aching against the current as he spun frantically.

“Hawke!” he screamed over the cacophony of the waves. “Hawke!”

As if it would help, Fenris gulped down on the salty air around him and dove. The foam of the waves eventually gave way to the darkness of the ocean as he tried to see anything other than blue, seaweed and disgruntled fish. His aimless diving and swimming went on for long enough that his muscles and lungs began to burn, but the fire in him was nothing compared to the aching pain that throbbed through him as seconds without sight of her ebbed into minutes.

Distantly, he caught the sound of crackling and managed to arch his neck enough to spot an outcropping of rocks that jutted out from the shore. The sound came again and he was suddenly hit with a pang of anxiety as Hawke’s all-too-familiar magic swept the area. Pushing himself forward he managed to get close enough that, when he crashed over the peak of a wave, he saw her.

Her coat was gone, as was her staff and a few more articles of clothing. What little layers she had managed to keep were torn and sodden and tangled up with the mess that was her hair where it lay slicked down her shoulders, chest and back. Even from such a distance, he couldn’t miss the crackle of fire that seeped from her mutilated palms. Before he could take in anything else he was thrust under.

“ – ing bastard,” he heard Hawke grit out when he resurfaced moments later.

The rawness of his lungs was forgotten. “Hawke!”

Before she had a chance to react she was struck by a faint blast of magic, followed by the crash of a wave against her that sent her scattering out of sight across the rocks. The world blurred around Fenris as he spied a man stumble to his feet not far away on the rocks, hands shaking with blue energy as he advanced on Hawke desperately, attempting to avoid the incoming waves.

With a final push Fenris was shoved against the outcropping. Barnacles sliced open his palms and knees as he clambered his way up the rocks (eyes darting to where Hawke was crouched, gasping and drenched) but the pain barely registered as he all but threw himself across the small expanse between himself and the man that had dared to lay a finger on Hawke. The mage was severely unprepared for the attack and the pair of them went flying against the rocks, only to be battered by another set of waves.

The only thing that saved Fenris from being turned into a bloody pulp was the corpse he held before him as a makeshift shield.

It felt like an age before the waves finally subsided enough for him to discard the bloodied body and scramble back to where he had last seen Hawke. The rocks had become a new form of hell, with waves and snow intermixing to form frozen daggers that sliced at him with every step he took, but the chattering in his teeth was nothing compared to the pulsing of his heart, and so he pushed himself forward. _How did I not notice the mage?_

Fenris let the thought seep from his mind when Hawke came into view. Her hands were a bloodied mess where they clutched at the rock desperately, her pale form trembling out of control against the dark rocks. Despite the way they ached and bled, he dropped to his knees beside her.

“Hawke,” he said, arms clutching at her. “Hawke!”

Her eyes cracked open to glare at him and he found himself staring into another form of ocean, the swirling blue hues of her irises rimmed with pain and exhaustion. It looked as though she wished to speak but he couldn’t hear her over the thrashing sea.

“Come on,” he urged, hooking his arms under her frail ones and hoisting her up. Her skin was akin to ice.

Her head lolled against his chest as he heaved them both away from the killing zone that was the edge of the rocks, instead propelling them towards a small beach some ways down the shoreline. When she tried to speak again, all he managed to hear was a faint gurgling noise as sea water dribbled down her chin. The site made him wince as he glanced the expanse of water between them and relative safety.

“I’m sorry, Hawke.”

One arm wrapped like iron around her waist, the other fisted at his side, Fenris braced himself for a break in the waves. When it came, he didn’t hesitate to shove himself – and Hawke – from the rocks with as much force as he could manage. Crashing through the water with a mostly dead weight was about as tiresome as he had expected it would be, but his reserves of energy somehow ran deeper when it was _Hawke’s_ dead weight attached to him at the hip.

Every time they surfaced the shore looked no closer than the last time. His mind reeled as they were battered by another set, but he managed to keep them from getting pummelled for the most part. Just as he was about to let a string of Tevene slip, Hawke’s palm lit up where it was clutched to his shoulder.

She let out a rattling breath and met his gaze before one word slipped from her lips. “Swim.”

He obeyed almost instantly, the frameworks of her plan making his stomach knot because she was injured and drained and not in the condition for this but it made sense nonetheless. His legs pumped behind them and after a moment, an odd sensation ran through him as Hawke turned in his grip to face backwards. After a moment of utter silence amongst the turmoil of the sea’s waters, something crackled in his ears and they were being propelled by Hawke’s glowing palm and Fenris’s tensed legs. The sensation would have made him gag under any other circumstance. Waves rolled past them as they barrelled closer and closer to the beach, rocks melting into a shell-covered sand-bar until Fenris could just feel sand scratching against the tips of his feet.

It was then that her magic abruptly cut off.

Fenris felt as if he had run into a wall, their motion all but ceasing despite the pumping of his legs. The sudden limpness of Hawke at his side kept him moving though until he had managed to plant one foot, then two on the sand. The breath rushed out of him as he stumbled to keep himself standing amongst the unstable sand and waves that seemed to haunt him like a poltergeist. Once he was sure he wasn’t going to topple over and be dragged out to his death, he heaved Hawke from against his chest to hang over his shoulder, his other arm keeping him balanced against the water.

It hurt. _Everything_ hurt. Once he was safely back on dry land and far enough from the water’s edge that he was sure the waves couldn’t reach them, Fenris all but collapsed to his knees and slowly lowered Hawke down beside him. Her hair was plastered all over her and she looked paler than normal, if that was even possible. He couldn’t smell anything other than salt and iron as he shook at her shoulder with what little strength he still had.

“H-Hawke,” he said through clattering teeth. _When did it become so cold?_

There was a long moment where she didn’t respond, where she lay before him on the sand like a corpse. Fenris’s hands begun to shake for reasons beyond the cold and his fingers crept towards her neck with more than a little hesitation. Before he could subject himself to the terror of feeling for a heartbeat, though, a rush of water erupted from her throat and spilled down her cheeks. She made it onto her side by herself, Fenris uselessly limp beside her.

“Ly –” she tried, but was interrupted by more spluttering. “Lyrium?”

With a groan, he dragged his eyes down to his belt where all the potions he had been carrying had ceased to exist. Fenris found himself staring at his markings while Hawke failed miserably at maintaining consciousness.

She followed his gaze and hissed as she shook her head. “We’ll . . . wait. For the . . . others.”

“ _Hawke . ._ .”

Her hand was suddenly on his limp one, fingers shaking as badly as his. “We’ll wait.”

So, they waited.

What felt like hours spanned out before them, with nothing but the creaking of the ocean and the screaming of seabirds and the rattling of their breathing as they lay motionless on the sand. Fenris had attempted to move them closer to the path but had regretted the decision not five seconds after he’d pushed himself to his knees; the sand had met his aching shoulder with a thud hard enough to make him audibly bite down on his tongue. Hawke had simply glanced at him, closed her eyes for a moment and let out a shaking breath.

So, they waited.

In the emptiness that surrounded them, the image of the mage on the rocks flashed through Fenris’s mind. How a mage had gone unnoticed by all of them – him in particular – continued to escape his mind as much as the fact that he had not been there to stop Hawke’s fall. Perhaps he had become complacent in his tactics, or maybe they had all simply overlooked how far some would push to get a chance at taking down the infamous Champion of Kirkwall. He knew as well as any of their motley crew that, although some admired Hawke, many also wanted nothing more than for her to be spread out on the floor surrounded by a halo of her own blood. At the thought, Fenris glanced to where Hawke had passed out beside him, her palms still slowly seeping blood, and knew that he would ensure he was bloodied and dead on the floor long before she ever was.

Distracted by this impossible woman and his own mind, Fenris remained unaware of the two forms racing down the path towards the small beach the pair of them had washed up on. It wasn’t until Aveline started shouting that Fenris whipped his head around in their direction.

“Thank the Maker,” Aveline said with relief as she came crashing across the sand, oblivious to the way Fenris winced at the pain in his head.

Varric was close behind the guard-captain, eyes barely sparing Fenris a glance before they landed on Hawke and stayed there. “Shit, Hawke,” the dwarf said as he dropped to his knees beside his closest friend, his Champion. “Why are you such an idiot?”

Hawke herself had regained consciousness at some point, but Fenris doubted she could properly understand anything anyone was saying. “Ly – lyrium.”

“Right,” Aveline said, attention turned to her pack. After a moment, she produced three vials. "Here.”

Without hesitation Hawke downed two, leaving the third in the sand beside her as her hand slowly began glowing a faint orange. “Always so . . . prepared.”

“I learned long ago to expect the worst when you were involved, Hawke.”

The ghost of laughter slipped from Hawke’s lips as the flames crept up her arms. One of her hands snaked out to reach for Fenris but stopped centimetres before making contact, her eyes meeting his. He nodded at her, his gut twisting slightly nonetheless, as her burning hand wrapped tenderly around his. His eyes began to flinch shut in preparation for pain that never came, her flames bringing nothing but a comforting warmth against his frigid skin. He couldn’t help the sigh that reverberated through him as her magic swept through him.

“As for you,” Aveline snapped at Fenris with barely any venom, “no more bloody heroics.”

“Good luck with that,” Varric sighed where he was helping Hawke into a slight sitting position, her lower back leaning heavily against him as she downed the last lyrium potion. She kept her flaming hand on Fenris.

The four of them remained on the beach for a time, Hawke’s hand flaming and Fenris chugging a few health potions before they slowly stood and started the long trek back to Kirkwall. Late afternoon had melted into early evening at some point and the warm hues of the sky reminded Fenris of too many beautiful and ugly things for his mind to comprehend (Hawke, Danarius, Seheron, Kirkwall, Hawke again). He walked close enough to her to bump against her shoulder, but kept to himself as they trudged, the words lost in his mouth.

But it didn’t take long for Hawke to reach over, hand ruffling his just-dried hair, and kiss him on the forehead, so many of the words he'd been trying to find bypassed with the one action. The spot remained warm the entire walk home.


End file.
